Elder Winters - June 17, 2012

Hello everybody, and happy Father's Day to you living in the States.  Bit of interesting Chinese culture for you here: in China and Taiwan, Fathers day is on August 8, or 8/8, because "8" in Chinese is "ba" and "father" in Chinese is "baba."  So, the date is Ba Ba. Get it? These Chinese are so clever they make puns into holidays.  I love it.  

Anyways, sorry in advance because this will be a short email.  We played four square as a zone p-day activity and I just lost track of time as I was carried away in good memories from three and a half months ago.  If you can believe it, this time was even more fun than the MTC because we kept on making jokes from the Book of Mormon (when the king gets out, someone would say "and the kingdom was passed from Amalickiah to his brother Ammoron" or "the king was poisoned by degrees" or "even as ye have done unto me, so shall it come to pass that thy seed shall cause that many shall suffer the pains that I do suffer" and stuff like that).  Great stuff.  I never thought I would use what I learned from my personal study in a game of four square.

Cool thing happened at church yesterday.  One of our "investigators" that goes to church once in a while and attends our English class religiously and one that we meet with maybe once every two months had a crazy experience.  And I mean a crazy good one.  So the subject for our Gospel Principles class that day was baptism.  We talked about the importance about it and why it needs to be done with proper priesthood authority.  After a great closing prayer by one of our recent converts, this investigator just looked at me in shock.  I pretty surprised by this and was like, "So.....do you feel the Spirit?"  And he was like, ".....I......have never felt like this."  And then I said, "Sweet.  That's the Spirit.  Feels awesome, doesn't it?" Now remember, this guy is like 80 years old.  He had a major spiritual experience, apparently the strongest one of his decently long life.  It was a cool experience.  And now we're going to meet with him on Wednesday to share how he can always have that feeling with him, because he's right - there's no other feeling like the Spirit, and there's nothing worth sacrificing to not have it.  I know confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Letter-day Saints have the right to have the Holy Ghost with them at all times as they live up to their baptismal covenants.  That is an amazing promise.  I've felt the Holy Ghost's presence in my life and I feel Him leading me in this work.  It's great, and I know He exists.  

Have a spectacular week, everyone.

Elder Winters